The housing official appointed by New York City’s radical socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani to lead NYC’s newly revived tenant enforcement office previously argued that “white, middle-class homeowners are a huge problem for a renter justice movement.”
Cea Weaver, who was named director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants on January 1 through an executive order signed by Mayor Mamdani, also said activists must work to “undermine the institution of homeownership,” according to a 2021 podcast appearance that is now resurfacing.
Weaver made the remarks during a September 2021 episode of the “Bad Faith” podcast while discussing eviction policy and communist renter organizing strategies.
The comments have drawn renewed scrutiny now that Weaver holds formal executive authority over tenant policy and enforcement in New York City.
Her appointment was announced on Mayor Mamdani’s first day in office as part of a slate of executive actions reviving the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, according to City Hall.
During the podcast discussion, Weaver argued that resistance to progressive housing policies often comes not from large corporate landlords but from individual homeowners.
“I think the reality is that a lot of the people who are pushing back on the eviction moratorium and more rental assistance are not corporate landlords,” Weaver said.
“They are homeowners who feel as though an eviction moratorium is an attack on their rights as a property owner.”
She went further, stating that such opposition creates a fundamental obstacle for housing activists.
“White, middle-class homeowners are a huge problem for the renter justice movement,” Weaver said.
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Later in the conversation, Weaver acknowledged that homeownership has become a primary source of stability in the United States due to weaknesses in social safety net programs, but argued that the structure itself impedes left-wing housing activism.
“Unless we can undermine the institution of homeownership and seek to provide stability in other ways, it’s a really difficult organizing situation we find ourselves in,” she said.
Weaver framed evictions as an issue of power rather than economics, suggesting that landlords resist policies allowing tenants to remain in properties they “consider themselves to own.”
In the same podcast, she endorsed a slate of progressive housing policies, including universal rent control, tenant unions, blocking evictions, and expanded rental assistance funded through higher taxes on wealthy Americans.
She also argued that broader government programs could gradually “chip away at homeownership” by replacing it as a source of personal stability.
Weaver has also faced scrutiny over past social media posts targeting homeownership.
In an August 2019 post on X that was later deleted but resurfaced, she wrote that “private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”
On her first day in office, Weaver appeared alongside Mayor Mamdani to announce city intervention in the bankruptcy proceedings of Pinnacle Group, a landlord linked to numerous housing violations and tenant complaints, according to City Hall.
The revelations have fueled criticism that the city’s tenant enforcement office is now being led by an official who has openly expressed hostility toward homeownership itself, a cornerstone of middle-class wealth and stability for millions of New Yorkers.
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